The way used by the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to express his desire to get closer to the European Union again was not the most elegant – making the end of his veto on Sweden’s access to NATO conditional on the reactivation of its process of joining the community club -, but the Twenty-Seven yesterday picked up the gauntlet thrown by Ankara and declared themselves ready to look for formulas to tighten their cooperation.
“We agree that there is a mutual interest in developing stronger relations between Turkey and the EU, and that a sustainable de-escalation of the situation in the Eastern Mediterranean would benefit the stability and security of the entire region”, summarized the high representative of the EU’s Foreign Policy, Josep Borrell, at the end of the Council of Foreign Ministers held yesterday in Brussels, with an agenda that, for the first time in a long time, included an item dedicated to Ankara.
Although no one took very seriously Erdogan’s invitation to reactivate EU accession negotiations, de facto frozen for a decade, his Government is interested in updating the agreement on the customs union with the club and obtaining a more generous treatment in terms of visas. The Union is willing to study both requests and other ways to improve bilateral cooperation, historically given to strong fluctuations, but with conditions.
The celebration, yesterday, of the 49th anniversary of the Turkish invasion of northern Cyprus to stop a coup attempt on the island sponsored by Greece (which Ankara commemorates as the Peacekeeping Operation) served as a reminder of the territorial conflict that has faced the three countries since the 1970s. “There are 7,987 days. This must end”, demanded the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Mediterranean island, Constantinos Kombos. “Resolving the Cypriot issue, in line with the resolutions of the United Nations” and the return to “a genuine dialogue” will be key to this reactivation of relations with Turkey, agreed Borrell, who also evoked the defense of rights and freedoms defined in European conventions.
The recent holding of elections in Turkey as well as in Greece and Cyprus “offers a window of opportunity” to resume dialogue between the three countries and try to resolve old conflicts. The meeting, in Vilnius, on the sidelines of Erdogan’s NATO summit with the newly re-elected Greek Prime Minister, Kiriakos Mitsotakis, reaffirmed this vision and the common will to ease tensions. For its part, the new Cypriot Government, which wants the EU to appoint a high representative to stimulate dialogue with Ankara on the future of the island, responded yesterday to Erdogan’s calls for dialogue and announced that it is ready to authorize the reactivation of Turkey’s EU accession negotiations if Erdogan resumes talks.
Erdogan used the NATO summit to extract new concessions not only from Sweden in exchange for lifting its veto on its entry into the military organization but also from the European Union. From his meeting in the Lithuanian capital with Charles Michel, president of the European Council, came the commitment that the European Commission will present in October not only the usual assessment of the state of the accession negotiations but an additional report that proposes new ways to strengthen cooperation.
Ukraine’s EU candidacy, Borrell recalled, has created “a new dynamic in our neighbourhood, as the process will be accelerated in all the Balkans and Turkey will also want to be part of this game”. Brussels has warned Ankara that there will be no “shortcuts” in this process, suspended to a large extent by the setback of recent years in the matter of the rule of law and the protection of human rights. And, despite this, it is essential that we always talk to each other – admitted the German Minister of Foreign Affairs, Annalena Baerbock – but let’s not be naive because there are no gifts because these are difficult times.
More immediate, on the other hand, may be the progress on updating the EU-Turkey customs union. Its modernization, diplomatic sources say, could allow the EU to plug legal loopholes that allow Russia to evade some of the Western sanctions through Turkey. Although funding has already been planned to renew the 2016 bilateral agreement on migration control in the Aegean Sea, the coincidence of these talks may complicate the European strategy, but, beyond the transactional nature of the Turkish offer, the EU has come to the conclusion that the new geopolitical context, marked by the war in Ukraine, requires improving relations with Ankara.
“Turkey is a strategic partner of the EU of the first order, it is one of the allied countries of NATO and it is a fundamental country in the Mediterranean”, emphasized the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, who recalled his role as a mediator in the talks with Russia about the Ukrainian grain. Albares condemned in categorical terms the Russian decision to block the renewal of the agreement and assured that the EU will help through its bilateral cooperation programs the countries “that are suffering the most in the short and medium term”.
On the other hand, European foreign ministers debated injecting 5 billion euros per year for four years into the section of the European Peace Facility dedicated to buying weapons in Ukraine to help it defend itself against Russian aggression. This and other decisions are part of the EU’s plan to add to the “security commitments” that the G-7 and NATO have offered in the long term to Kyiv.
